What did I cook this weekend.....

Getting back to the comments by steak purists: there aren't many bad things you can do to good steaks, aside from overcooking them. I like simply pan frying them, or searing them on a bed of rock salt in an almost red-hot cast iron frying pan, flipping them and turning off the burner; I like them grilled, and I like them broiled. I like them with salt and pepper, or marinated in Italian dressing, or with butter, or buried in mushrooms and onions. I haven't tried one with bleu cheese yet, but that's on my list now.

To call eating a steak with anything but salt and pepper blasphemy is akin to calling all sex but the missionary position perverted....

 

Grilled vendace (little fish called "muikku" in Finnish), grilled onions, tomato with mozarella, and some Skeeter Pee!

 

Oh no no no no terrible analogy!! Using the sex analogy Having Steak with anything other than salt and pepper is liking having sex with a farm animal it just ain't right.


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Those look a lot like the smelt I used to eat by the dozen.

 

Don't be knocking the sheep till you've..... Oh wait... I need to be proper on this thread, right?

I had those grilled sardines for lunch every day in Lisbon. Love them.

 

I always make a thick blue cheese sauce when I cook horse steaks (or horse burgers). It's awesome with a bottle of rosso.

 

At the price of 1.85 a pound (never seen them at this price before), I think we'll buy a bunch and put them in the freezer for later. My wife has fun sitting outside at the table cleaning them ;-)

 

Eating horses is a touchy subject with people where I was raised. A lot of them consider it one short step from cannibalism....

 

How does the flavour & texture of horse compare to beef? I've never had horse meat, but I've been curious about it ever since I heard it was fairly common in Sweden/Finland. Horse meat for human consumption is illegal here in the US; not sure why.
Regards, GF.

 

Honestly sometimes I'm surprised we can still eat beef in the US, all those poor helpless cows.

Anyway, the butts from Saturday tuned out incredibly good. Melts in your mouth just like pork candy!



Also whipped up a loaf of white bread since we were out of buns..

 

Grilled bacon wrapped shrimp with BBQ sauce, Texas Caviar (Southwest corn and bean salsa kind of thing), guac and tomatoe salsa, and pulled pork this weekend.

I found a video on Youtube by a guy who does pork and I love that mop sauce he makes. I rubbed with mustard and some Jack Daniels rub (out of homemade stuff) and mopped a couple of times. I expected the butt to require a few more hours in the morning, but it finished by the time I got up from bed so I didn't get to mop it as much as I wanted but everyone said it was the best I've done yet.

Picked up a smoked cheddar yesterday in Petosky in one of them fancy gourmay stores. and we found a pear jam and sliced some pears to go with the cheese and the ladies bought a fancy fruit wine.

 

"Chopped" style I made dinner last night out of whatever was in the fridge. Boiled some ziti and the sauce was leftover goat cheese, chopped sundried tomatoes and chopped pepperocini peppers. Pretty good if I do say so myself... I might even make it again.

 

Two pork butts went on yesterday morning. I have one of those smoker controllers, which I LOVE. I took my two boys golfing during the day, and when we got back the pork was almost done. No worries.

I made a KFC-clone cole slaw. It was almost exact. My daughter says it's the best she's ever had. Here's the recipe. Saucy, sweet and slightly tangy, just like the colonel's (only better ). I used a food processor to chop the cabbage really fine.

 

To think that there is ANY food that should only be cooked 1 way is incredibly short sighted.


Saying that steak can only be cooked 1 way is akin to saying that scallops can only be prepared 1 way.


Enjoy the ketchup on that hotdog though.

 

Horse meat is illegal (back and forth) in the US because the US mentality is an extension of the British mentality, with slight divergences here and there that haven't evolved much over 250 years time. As is Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It was a British cultural thing to stigmatise the consumption of horse meat, nothing more nothing less. The rest of the world happily eats the meat when the animal is no longer useful, whereas countries like the US and Britain gladly killed horses so they could make glue out of their hooves and simply discarded several hundred pounds of top-notch meat as waste. The basic principle being that you don't eat your pets, and horses were considered as pets by the British. The fact is that a horse is livestock, and livestock aren't pets.

First of all, it's the most wonderful red meat you'll ever eat. It has absolutely zero fat or gristle. You can slice through the steaks like butter. The taste is a bit gamey or spicy, not really quite sure how to describe it. I've eaten a lot of reindeer also and horse tastes pretty similar to reindeer. Definitely try some if you get a chance.

 

Geronimo (famous Apache warrior) was said to prefer horse meat over the cattle they'd russle from Mexico.

 

Speaking of picking your own path to HELL....

 

I'm very narrow minded where certain things are concerned I freely admit this to be true . Beer i'm very snobby, Mexican food forget about it, I won't even go to a "mexican" restaurant near me And a really good steak should be done simply with salt and pepper unless its a tougher cut then do what you must to it braise it smother it in cheese etc. These are my opinions. shortsighted? Yes. Unapologetically so.


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Oh NOOOO, there are FAR more fun ways of getting there than eating a PB/braunschweiger sandwich! LOL!

 

I personally have no qualms about eating horses, or just about anything else that doesn't eat me first. But your narrative is based on dubious history and a touch of cultural bias, IMHO. Reality isn't that simple. For example, at one time the Roman Catholic Church forbade the eating of horsemeat, because doing so was part of pagan religious rites - especially in Germanic populations.

Eating horses and donkeys was common in England, up until the First World War. And horsemeat wasn't effectively banned in the US until 2007, when Congess voted to stop providing funds for health inspection at facilities which slaughtered horses. That's in the process of changing, by the way.

Nor do horses here generally get slaughtered for glue, and the rest of their bodies thrown away. Instead, they're shipped to Canada and Mexico for slaughter.

Texas is one of the more hypocritical states, when it comes to horsemeat. It has banned its sale since 1949, but you'll note two of the three slaughterhouses closed by federal action in 2006 were in Texas. And it ships thousands and thousands of horses to Mexico each year for slaughter.

Your attempt to draw a bright line between pets and livestock is simplistic, by the way; it's a continuum, not a sharp divide. There are working dogs that herd sheep; there are dogs whose only reason for being is keeping someone company. There are horses still being used as beasts of burden; there are riding horses that are loved and cared for as family members. In fact, I've seen a fair number of pet pigs - a couple of them owned by otherwise hardheaded, practical farmers.

 

I've been to so-called "Mexican' restaurants in the Midwest, and I don't blame you for giving them a pass. Nor would I hang out at Chinese restaurants there, unless they've changed a lot in the last thirty years. But you're missing out on one of the world's great cuisines if you think Mexican food is refried beans and rice, grease, hot peppers and tortillas.

I can understand someone being narrow minded; it's common. But I don't really understand someone taking pride in being that way....

 

This past weekend I made pork L'orange, sort of. Pork steak marinated in an orange sauce for 4 hours, then grilled over charcoal & basted with more orange sauce as it cooked. Sides were kale sauteed in olive oil with crimini mushrooms, garlic & tarragon; and sweet potato fries, with sea salt and an orange wedge garnish. Paired with a tasty brown ale. I honestly think this was the best pork steak I've ever eaten.
Regards, GF.

 

I think "narrow minded" was an unfortunate choice of words. It's more like a confidence in opinion. I'm comfortable with the knowledge that I have experienced a wide range of options in my life and have weeded out the ones I know I don't like. I like bleu cheese. I've tried it on steak and I think it overpowers the flavor of the steak. Tried it. Eliminated it.

At my age, 51, I have had a lot of experience with food, including quite a bit of professional experience. I don't have a culinary degree, but I'm confident in my experiences and education. I have only recently begun brewing and expanding my palate beyond the mundane. I'm still experiencing and not as confident in my own palate yet. So I don't think it's about narrow vs. open minded. It's experienced confidence of opinion vs. same, but with opposing opinion. Neither is "wrong". (I'm just more right than anyone else!)

 

What controller do you use? Been thinking of getting one myself.

 

Auber makes one that is less expensive than others and, from what I can see, offers the same functionality. Works great on my Weber Smokey Mountain.

 

Did you have to buy an adapter separately to mount it up to your WSM?

 

Can I just confess that my ignorance of Montana was such that I thought ingredients such as criminis, sweet potatoes, kale and to a lesser extent, oranges would be hard to find or expensive as they dont grow near there.

Mind=Blown

 

I'm not sure that it's a point of pride but rather an acceptance of who I am. These are matters of personal taste and nothing more. Where certain things are concerned I do not compromise at all.


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Its not common but horse meat is legal in canada, you can buy it St a store down the road from me

 

Y U so narrow minded and short sided?

 

Back on track...

We visited with my mom and her husband this weekend and they cooked one of the best meals I've had in a long time over an open fire. Some HUGE cast iron pans, a grill, and a nice hot fire and we were set.
Venison, grilled onions and peppers, sausages, and potatoes. The meal alone was enough to convince wife that we need to go camping sometime in the near future

 

Hehehhe, I've mentioned this to gratus a couple times in the past, but Im sure the picture in my mind of Montana and the reality are most likely very different (Ive never been there).

Wide expanses of undeveloped land. Wild Horses. Snow. Rocks. Small pockets of built-up areas surrounded by more of said mountains, snow, and rocks (or perhaps a huge cliff).

Oh, and raucus college towns...

Nary a fruit tree, and no sushi.

Probably completely and utterly incorrect to the point of being mildly offensive.

 

Oh yeah... I'm seriously impressed by those pans. And envious, too. What they're filled with is also pretty impressive, especially the venison.

Definitely gonna start hunting again when I retire. If mama doesn't want to eat Bambi and Thumper, she'll just have to clear out of the kitchen now and then.

 

HOLD IT!!!! HOLD IT!

Evidently Homer doesn't have a smartphone, but could we at least set up a fund to get him a digital camera?

 

Herbed red potatoes stole the show!
Herbed chicken and caramelized onion kale.

 

Looks good i love roasted chicken and potatoes. I havent cooked in a while time to get in the kitchen because now I'm hungry


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I don't look at expanding my horizons as 'compromising.' The older I get the more I stretch, and the more things I find that I like. I like some more than others, of course - but life would get boring if I just stuck to my favorite food, drink, clothing, music, furniture, architecture, vehicles, women (before I got married, anyway), or whatever.

 

No, the fan that comes with it (get the right one!) has little springy clips that fit into one of the holes on the bottom vent of the WSM. The only thing I did was use metal tape to better seal all the other vents.

 

I think it looks good, too. Who would've thought a simple photo of fried potatoes in the pan could make me almost taste them? My compliments to the photographer; maybe he should pursue a career in food photography.

It's also good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't peel potatoes before frying them. I gave that up years ago, even on thick-skinned spuds like Russet Burbanks. Instead I just give them a quick scrub under tap water, and carve out any dubious looking parts.

My mother was a good cook, who spent years feeding eight kids and a hardworking husband. But I was talking to her about cooking one day towards the end of her life, and she mentioned two things she wished she had figured out fifty or sixty years earlier.

One was that she was wasting both her time and good nutrition, during the countless hours she used up peeling potatoes. The other was that she didn't need to cook vegetables to death the way her mother taught her; in fact a lot of them are delicious and healthy eaten raw. She said if she had it to do over she'd have fed us a lot more raw salads, with everything from mushrooms to broccoli in them.

 

*bows, ponders the future....*

So true.

I typically get a quick sear on veggies, add a tiny amount of water for a short steam and serve.

Raw is great too. Broccoli, red bell, cucumber, cauliflower and a little ranch can make a meal. I can't stand overcooked veggies.

Potatos MUST have peel.